


Revenge

by haphephobiaisfun



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 04:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20465108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haphephobiaisfun/pseuds/haphephobiaisfun
Summary: Gabriel bides his time as he plots to destroy the angel and the demon who stopped Armageddon.





	Revenge

Time tends to change perceptions of the past. What may have been an intense moment of sadness or fear can be softened by the passage of time. Looking back at emotional events can seem like looking at another person’s life rather than our own. Over the years we grow bolder, more fearless, and gain the opportunity to move past things that were once crippling events in our lives.

Not all is forgotten, however. Sometimes, we nurse the pain, the rage, the vengeance we feel. We are in turn nurtured by it’s poisonous grip. From that dismal place, hate whispers that there is no moving on to better days. There is only revenge. 

Gabriel seethed with a red hot anger, an ire that had enveloped him for decades. Armageddon was his time, his opportunity to show off his… to show off Heaven’s army. This is what every moment of existence had led up to. Sure, there was humanity to guide and protect, but he knew what the real endgame was: destruction of the demons of Hell. The total and final defeat of the enemy would be glorious. 

His predestined moment of triumph was erased by an unwilling antichrist child, the angel Aziraphale, and the demon Crowley. The angel and demon had been working together for thousands of years, moving slowly away from their true assignments and falling in love with Earth and its human inhabitants. Throwing away a place in the final battle for something as trivial as food, the arts, and comfort? Gabriel expected this stupidity from a lowly demon, but the betrayal from Aziraphale was insulting and infuriating.The ineffable plan, at least as he knew it, had been thwarted by a member of each side. 

While Gabriel didn’t question it aloud, he had begun to let doubt to settle in. Was the ineffable plan really derailed, or was there something else at play? What was really going on here? It wasn’t long before a single thought soon consumed him: What if Gabriel never knew the actual plan? Were these two idiots the ones destined to betray their sides and fight for humanity? What if Gabriel had been played for a fool since the dawn of existence? 

It was clear to Gabriel that both beings had to pay, something the princes of Hell agreed with. Revenge makes strange bedfellows. He worked with the enemy Beelzebub to capture and destroy Aziraphale and Crowley. Once these two were gone forever, both sides could go about the business of rebuilding the plan and would bring Armageddon about just a bit behind schedule. This was another failure, as the angel and demon were seemingly impervious to destruction. Crowley bathed in holy water without so much as a sweat, while Aziraphale came out of his whirlwind of hellfire still flaunting his crisp light suit and a smile. Baffled, both sides conceded to the demands of the indestructible pair to be left alone to live out their existence on Earth. 

Years later, the fear Gabriel felt when he saw Aziraphale thrive in the hellfire lessened over time. His bruised ego overtook his mind, demanding revenge. While the other angels wanted nothing more to do the situation, the archangel dwelled on his vengeance, and little else. He would just wait until no one expected him to act. He would wait until the pair was completely comfortable in their circumstances. Then, he would strike them down. The archangel didn’t care that he’d have to do it alone, and he didn’t care about the wait. Gabriel would have his day.

Crowley moved into the bookstore a couple of years prior. The pair had miracled an extra pair of rooms into the upper floor: one for Crowley, and one for his plants. They discussed it as being practical, but deep down they knew the real reason. If the higher powers ever decided to destroy them again, they needed to be in close proximity to each other. There was strength in numbers; even if it was just the two of them, they fared better than being alone. 

There was some discussion of leaving the bookstore (and London) altogether, but it was just talk. They loved the city, and all of its inhabitants. 

“Someday,” Arizaphale would say. “Someday I might have the urge to just leave it all behind and start fresh in the country.”

Crowley would smile and nod. “Leave the bookstore? Like hell you would.”

The angel would just roll his eyes and begin fussing with whatever bookshelf was nearby. 

On a nondescript morning, approximately 62 years after the world didn’t end, Gabriel went to London. 

He did not head to the bookstore. No, he had other ideas. As he walked through the crowd of locals, those human gnats, Gabriel solidified his plans. He stopped at a newspaper stand. 

“C’mon, governor,” the seller said as he waived a newspaper in front of the archangel. 

Gabriel sent a blinding light into the stand, igniting all the papers with a white flame. The papers flew up, careening into passerbys. They flew into car windows and buildings. The celestial fire spread quickly.

A few blocks away, Aziraphale gasped audibly. His breath was nearly knocked out of him.

“Crowley,...”

The demon jumped to his side. 

“...its… it’s bad. We have to go.”

Crowley was not without his own intuition. “I think it’s your lot, Angel.”

Aziraphale clutched his chest as he headed to the door. “Just one. Just him.”

They came up on the scene in minutes, by which time a truck from the fire brigade had arrived and begun to fight the fire. The white hot flames had overcome half a block of stores, and the water being flushed in seemed to do nothing to quench it.

“Celestial fire. We need holy water.”

“Can you bless the water they are using?”

Aziraphale walked up to the hydrant pit and laid his hands around the opening. Crowley kept a nervous eye out as the angel muttered a prayer and salted the perimeter. 

“Crowley,” the angel said, “get out of here.”

The demon nodded knowingly and retreated into a storefront a couple of doors down, where he joined people inside staring through the windows. With Crowley safe, the angel finished the incantation. The water, visibly unchanged, began to destroy the flames. Holy water misted over the streets, puddling in the streets and accumulating on the windows nearby. 

Crowley stepped back from the window of the store he had retreated to. Leaving might be tricky.

A hand landed heavily on Crowley’s shoulder. 

“I knew it!” 

Crowley spun around to lock eyes with a madman. “Gabriel?”

The archangel looked almost demonic. His brown hair was a disheveled mess, his skin was covered in scars. The hands that now clutched Crowley were filthy, with long, unkempt nails. Gabriel made no attempt to assimilate to his former stuffy and well-groomed form.

“No reason you’d be out of his sight for a second unless it would cost you your life.” He pulled the demon to his face. “But I know you’d die for him. And you will, don’t worry.”

With no time for the demon to react, Gabriel threw Crowley into a wall. With enough force to crumble both the wall and part of the ceiling, the demon was knocked out on impact. Large chunks of drywall fell on top of Crowley as he crumpled to the floor. Those who had been watching the fire from inside the store now ran out of the front door to escape the crazed individual behind them. In their panic, they let a bit of the holy mist inside. 

An unconscious Crowley was picked up and tossed to the front of the store. As his body laid on the floor, the mist began to settle on him. Slight pillars of smoke rose from his flesh.

“Perfect,” Gabriel growled.

Arizaphale’s chest tightened again as he heard people screaming behind him. He turned to see them pouring out of the shop Crowley had retreated to. The holy water mist swept heavily over the streets as the firefighters put out the last of the celestial flames.

“No, please no.”

Gabriel knelt down next to the demon. He ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair. 

“You’ve been quite the tempter, Crowley. Or is it Crawley? Eh, it doesn’t matter.”

He pulled out a glass container of clear fluid, then rolled the demon onto his back. Gabriel pulled off the glasses Crowley wore, and forcibly opened his eyes. They were rolled back, but still obviously demonic. Like the rest of him, the eyes began to smoke a bit.

“Aziraphale was a good enough soldier, but his heart got in the way too often. I guess he was easy to use, to manipulate, in this scheme of yours.”

He opened the demon's mouth. There was a slight whimper of pain as Crowley began to come around.

“You two robbed me of my single greatest achievement. Now, I will rob Aziraphale of his happiness. And you? I will rob you of your life.”

Gabriel removed the top of the container, swirling the water inside around. As Crowley moaned again, Gabriel stood up. He held out the container out in front of him. 

“Angel,” Crowley muttered.

Gabriel laughed. “That’s right, filth. I am an angel, and you will be destroyed at my hand.”

“He was talking about me.”

A flame blade pierced Gabriel’s chest from behind. He screamed, dropping the container as he grabbed for the blade. Aziraphale pulled the blade back and spun him around. 

“You should have left us alone, Gabriel.”

“You cost me… everything. I will never stop until you pay,” Gabriel seethed. He painfully swiped for Aziraphale’s sword, and missed. “Your friend is dead, and you are next. There is nothing you can do now to stop me.”

Aziraphale pulled the sword back. With no time to consider his actions, he cut off the head of the archangel Gabriel. 

The head fell to the floor, freed from its former body. Aziraphale watched in horror as the head rolled until it landed next to another body. This one was smoking. 

“Crowley!”

The angel swept up the moaning body of his friend. The holy water that Gabriel dropped missed hitting Crowley from above, but it now puddled under back, blistering him and paralyzing him. 

“Please, no,” Aziraphale whispered to his friend. He miracled the floor around him dry, but the damage was done. Crowley tried to speak, but lacked the strength to offer more than a moan. Gently, Aziraphale lifted him up. In the midst of the panic in the streets, in the aftermath of a lunatic setting fire to a newspaper stand, the angel carried his friend home.

Healing was a process. Aziraphale could not simply miracle Crowley’s wounds away. He had to treat the outside as well as the inside. For the body itself, hellfire had to burn away the blisters and scars from the holy water. He was able to obtain it from a demon. Beelzebub had heard of Gabriel’s slaying, and wanted no such trouble on their end. They sent a lesser demon with the hellfire and their assurance that they would not bother the pair if the pair stayed away from them. Aziraphale instructed the demon to apply the fire to a salve over Crowley’s wounds. By the time the fireshad burned out, the wounds were but scars. The angel sent the demon back with a message of agreement to Beelzebub.

The inside was more difficult. The angel spent a lot of trying to link their souls and heal that damage. Crowley was essentially comatose. His movements were jerky and involuntary, his sounds were only the occasional gasp or whine. Aziraphale would sit next to him on the bed, taking Crowley’s hands in his own, and try to reach his soul. 

“Come back. It’s safe now. I promise.”

After so many days, Aziraphale’s messages grew more panicked.

“Please come back.”

“I promise, we are safe.”

“Come back to me.”

“I miss you.”

One night, Aziraphale laid next to Crowley, fighting the unusual urge to sleep. The past weeks had made his spirit weary, and his discouragement compounded it.

“Crowley, come back to me,” he whispered as sleep tried to take him. “We can get a cottage...lots of plants all around...spend the days away from London. I can sell it… the bookstore.”

As he drifted into unconsciousness, the demon’s eyes opened. Crowley weakly looked over at the angel and squeezed Aziraphale’s hand. 

“Like hell you would.”

**Author's Note:**

> My first Good Omens story is a quick one I tossed together. I really enjoyed the show, even more so than the book. Feedback is always welcome!


End file.
